GOP goes down with 'family values'

One of the great mysteries for P+J is why, whenever there is a Washington controversy in which a major male political figure is discovered to be engaging in superior behavior in a most un-superior way (for example, in a public men’s room), it’s 90 percent likely that the figure is not just a Republican, but a “family values” kind of Republican.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, there is also a boatload of empirical evidence on the non-superior side of how hookers claim to do better business at national GOP conventions than Democratic ones.

So Senator Larry Craig, Republican of Idaho, appears to have been the latest swinger. He allegedly tried to signal to a plainclothes police sergeant in an adjoining toilet stall in the Minneapolis airport that he was looking for a bit of company. Court records indicate that Senator Craig pleaded guilty and paid a fine on a lewdness charge.

The senator, in a statement issued by his office, complained that the police had “misconstrued” his actions. Those actions, according to the sergeant in the adjoining stall, comprised of “tapping his toes several times and [moving] his foot closer to my foot. I moved my foot up and down slowly. The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area.”

While the sergeant said that he recognized this wingtip tango as “a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct,” we’re quite certain that Senator Craig will reveal how his footwork was a well-known move used in Pocatello when someone is searching for a fourth for bridge. Either that or he has unusually long legs, and ends up playing footsies with guys in the next stall inadvertently, but on a regular basis.